The Distillation

The two-year exemptions, first granted in June 2017, are renewable. Health Canada refused to provide VICE with the quantities allowed, claiming the information is confidential. "These exemptions were for religious purposes only."

Canadian followers of these religions have fought for more than 15 years to obtain an exemption from the Canadian federal government. Jeffrey Bronfman, a third-generation heir to one of Montreal's wealthiest families, was at the heart of the negotiations. Ironically, his great-uncle, Samuel Bronfman made his fortune in the 1920s with the Seagram liquor company, while alcohol was banned in the United States. The Céu do Montreal and the Beneficient Spiritist Center União do Vegetal are religions originating in Brazil. The main sacrament at the heart of their practice is called Santo Daime and consists of consuming ayahuasca to meet the divine. "Health Canada recognizes that the use of Daime tea is an integral part of religious practices in some cultures," Gagnon said.

...adding the trade group's support to kratom experts' push to keep the herbal ingredient available. Experts also say salmonella issues currently linked to kratom could be an indirect result of FDA's import alert as noncompliant suppliers filled continued demand.

But when it comes to decriminalisation, said Erskine-Smith, “we’re not talking removing the criminal sanction for sale, we’re not talking removing the criminal sanction for production, as we did with cannabis.”

Should the Liberals approve their resolution this week, decriminalisation would be backed by two of Canada’s three major parties. But even so, there is little guarantee that the idea will make its way into the Liberal platform in the upcoming 2019 federal election. Trudeau, who leads the party, has repeatedly said his government is not considering legalising any other drugs besides marijuana. Erskine-Smith stressed the difference between the two issues. The federal government’s efforts to end marijuana prohibition aim to halt the flow of profits to organised crime, given that Canadians spent an estimated C$5.7 billion on marijuana last year.

Arévalo, a traditional healer, was shot twice under a midday sun on April, 19th, 2018. Witnesses say she collapsed to the ground, gasping: “They’ve killed me! They’ve killed me!” as her daughter Virginia ran to cradle her dying mother’s head.​Within minutes, anguish spilled into uncontrollable rage: Arévalo’s neighbours seized and lynched the alleged perpetrator, a Canadian man named Sebastian Woodroffe, 41, who had travelled to the region to learn about indigenous medicine. The horrific double murder has cast a harsh spotlight on the unregulated world of ayahuasca tourism. Ayahuasca, a plant brew that contains the hallucinogenic drug dimelthytryptamine (DMT), has attracted to Peru thousands of western tourists seeking to cure everything from spiritual anomie to drug addiction through traditional shamanic ceremonies. The boom has brought a welcome income for some of Peru’s most marginalized communities, but it has also been implicated in a number of deaths – and provoked accusations of cultural appropriation and profiteering.

“In the case of a company, proof of citizenship or proof of being ordinarily resident in Zimbabwe of the majority of directors or proof of an exemption by the Minister and proof of incorporation in Zimbabwe of the company…” according to the regulations.​Five-year renewable licenses would allow growers to possess, transport and sell cannabis oil and fresh and dried cannabis, according to Reuters, which reported to have viewed Zimbabwe’s regulations. The regulatory change came via Statutory Instrument 62, which amended the Dangerous Drugs Act to include Production of Cannabis for Medicinal and Scientific Use Regulations.

“Every agricultural crop has its highs and its lows,” she said. “No pun intended.”

And because US federal law still prohibits cannabis, Oregon growers cannot legally sell outside the state’s borders ... Tristan Reisfar works part-time for a company, High Desert Pure, that produces vapor cartridges and said he fields phone calls from desperate growers offering to sell their marijuana for as little as $100 per lb. When Oregon launched its recreational marijuana program, it was common for growers to count on bringing in $2,400 per lb. “We’re coming into another growing season here, what are they going to do then?” Reisfar asked. Willison, the co-owner of Eugenius LLC, said he still has “a couple hundred lb of product in our vault”. He has pared down his operation from 16 employees to seven. Three-quarters of the farm has been switched from cannabis to hemp seed. Hemp is a related plant that doesn’t offer the same high as cannabis, but has a variety of uses including fabric and medicine. He plans to keep growing marijuana to maintain his brand until the market rebounds. In the meantime, he estimates that the marijuana portion of his business is losing between $5,000 and $10,000 a month. “This glut’s going to take a few years. There is really no short-term answer,” Willison said.​From the Article: Growing pains: how Oregon wound up with way more pot than it can smokePublished by:Guardian.co.ukOriginal Link :https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/20/oregon-too-much-weed-oversupply-what-happened-420Artwork Fair Use by: By H. Zell - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9421711

Australia’s first pill-testing trial has been hailed as a “tremendous” success by the Australian Capital Territory’s chief health officer, police commissioner, paramedics and drug reform advocates ... Two samples were “red-flagged” for their potential lethality ... 'We've just taken a big step towards taking back control of the dangerous black market in drugs in order to keep our kids safe,' Mr Noffs said in a statement. He later tweeted: 'Two of the samples were deadly. So, harm reduced. We did it.'

The ACT’s chief health officer, Prof Paul Kelly, joined Caldicott, the territory’s chief police officer, Justine Saunders, and Toby Keene, the presiding first aid and ambulance officer at the festival, in hailing the success of the trial at a Canberra press conference on Monday. “It was very much a strong harm minimisation process within the remit of the national drug strategy,” Kelly said, adding that a raft of legal and public health complexities had been overcome to stage it. Keene said medical officers treated 86 people at the festival – three went to hospital – and information from the pill-testers assisted paramedics in their treatment of intoxicated patients. Saunders said police were pleased with how the trial proceeded. “We all understand in terms of addressing the impact of drugs in our community, the solution is not to arrest our way out of it,” she said.​From the Article: Two 'deadly' samples found in pill-testing trial at Canberra music festivalPublished by:Guardian.co.uk and Dailymail.co.ukOriginal Link :https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/30/two-deadly-samples-found-in-pill-testing-trial-at-canberra-music-festivalAND http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5672585/Two-deadly-MDMA-capsules-detected-Groovin-festival-pill-testing-Canberra.html#ixzz5ECdGQ57p Artwork Fair Use by: By Bsteinmann [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

*The closer you were to the recycling bin, the better your odds. This is what privilege looks like. Did you notice how the only ones who complained about fairness were in the back of the room?

...for many of the researchers and psychotherapists who pioneered the early psychedelic treatments of the 1960s, it signaled something else: that psychedelics, like cannabis, might soon become threatened by capitalist forces that prioritize profiteering over healing.

Soon after the announcement that Peter Thiel—among billionaire ex-hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz and film producer Sam Engelbardt—would be funding the psychedelic trials headed by UK-based company Compass Pathways, a small group of longtime psychedelic researchers began to talk amongst themselves about what they could do, if anything, to ensure that psychedelic medicine becomes accessible rather than commandeered by one company controlling the market for profit. After months of debate, they put out a public statement earlier this month—publicized by psychedelic site Chacruna—on their joint commitment to prioritizing the “common good.” It’s signed by nearly all the luminaries, living today, responsible for the psychedelic drug research movement. Ram Dass, Dennis McKenna, Amanda Feilding, James Fadiman, Rick Doblin, Bill Richards…these are names you might not know, but they, among many others on the statement, have fought for decades to reshape the way our society understands psychedelic drugs and, in turn, wellness. “The statement was inspired by generations of researchers and practitioners who’ve shared their wonderful discoveries and know-how freely,” said Robert Jesse, a longtime psychedelic advocate and investigator on Johns Hopkins psilocybin trials. “Now, new entities, standing on the shoulders of those giants, are coming into the field. We’re at a choice point. Will the field grow with the ethos of open sharing? Or will it become clogged by proprietary methods, restrictive licensing, exclusive contracts, patents, and the like?” Compass said in a statement sent to Herb that it will make all its data available to the research community “as soon as possible after study completion.” The statement also said that the company is currently supporting outside research by providing their GMP psilocybin to scientists at below cost, and has developed a program with the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Europe’s leading scientific association of neuroscientists, in which its members can receive their psilocybin for free. “We do not want pricing or intellectual property rights to stand in the way of scientific research or patient access to care,” read the company’s statement. [Compass has not become a signatory of the Statement on Open Science for Psychedelic Medicines and Practices as of 4/30/2018]

*ECfES.org is a Signatory of the Statement on Open Science for Psychedelic Medicines and Practices​, which can be found HERE and HERE.

*Additionally, ECfES Founder/Director James J. , Chairman of the Board Dr. Vip Short, and Board Advisor Alan Cohn, MD are each individual signatories of the Statement on Open Science for Psychedelic Medicines and Practices​, which can be found HERE and HERE.​From the Article: Will psychedelics go corporate like cannabis?Published by:Herb.coOriginal Link :https://herb.co/marijuana/news/psychedelic-renaissance-corporateArtwork Fair Use by: By Nathan W. Pyle

By imposing an effective ban on importing kratom (including seizures at ports), the FDA forced manufacturers to shift from high-quality sources of the herb to lesser suppliers, thus increasing the potential for issues such as salmonella, which had never previously been an issue with kratom in the U.S.

The mushrooms are grown nearby, dried and ground into a fine powder before being decanted into capsules ... This is the first time they’ve had a women only retreat. “The #MeToo movement has demonstrated how common sexual harassment and abuse is in our society,” says Maclean. “We wanted to create a space that was super safe, and hospitable to women – especially women who are suffering from trauma or other things that they might not feel comfortable exploring in a mixed setting.” ​It’s been over 50 years since the Summer of Love but psychedelics are finally being taken seriously again. In 2017, researchers at Imperial College London discovered that psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) may have the potential to “reset” the brains of depressed patients ... ​MycoMeditations is open to those who suffer from depression, anxiety or trauma, as well as those who don’t – but none of us are here to “party”. We’ve all come with intentions and issues in our personal or professional lives that we want to explore. ​From the Article: Inside Jamaica's magic mushroom retreat for womenPublished by:Independent.co.ukOriginal Link :https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/americas/jamaica-magic-mushroom-retreat-women-mycomeditations-treasure-beach-montego-bay-a8319816.htmlArtwork Fair Use by: By Pastelitodepapa [CC0], from Wikimedia Commons

ECfES

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